"ve******@hotmail.com" wrote:
1) Is there any particular lanuguage which will give me greater
flexibility over another within the .net family? (I've heard c# is easy
to learn)
Since our customers use both C# and VB, for both .NET 2.0 and 1.1, we have
to be well-versed in all four combinations. But we write all our original
code in C# 1.1, then use Visual Studio and InstantVB to port that to 2.0 and
VB, respectively.
If you have any experience with C or C++, then C# is definitely the way to
go. If you are coming from the VB6 world, then VB.NET would be a natural
choice. If you have little or no programming experience and are starting
from scratch, then I would recommend C# for the following reasons:
1) C# enjoys better support from Microsoft, component and tool vendors.
Most new products/features are rolled out first in C#, then to VB. This is
not always the case (e.g., edit & continue) but more often than not.
2) C# is much more concise and less verbose than VB.
3) There's a number of little details that make C# a better experience.
e.g., C# allows multiple assignments in a single line (int a = b = 6), inline
operators (int a = b++), #region statements within methods/properties, etc.
All of these are marked as errors when we convert from C# to VB.
..NET is an excellent choice for the Windows platform. It's feature rich,
very stable, well-documented, well-supported by Microsoft and the developer
community. The one thing we really like about .NET languages: you write the
code and it works. Unlike C++ in which you can spend hours chasing down
pointer-to-pointer bugs, etc. Our company is exclusively .NET.
The biggest downside to .NET is that Microsoft for whatever reason refuses
to force-install .NET on all Windows PC. As a result, even today only a very
small percentage of PCs have .NET 2.0 installed. This means that most of
your customers will be forced to download the 17MB redistributable, which is
a big hassle. People without broadband will balk at this, and people with
broadband are like, "What's this .NET thing?" As a result, we are forced to
stay with .NET 1.1. Microsoft's solution is to include .NET with Vista,
which means that you won't see the latest version of .NET installed on most
PCs until 2009 (given the 2007 release date and typical 2 year adoption rate).
--
Timm Martin
Mini-Tools
..NET Components and Windows Software
http://www.mini-tools.com